The ODAAE
Underway, the Oxford Dictionary of African American English, Henry Louis Gates Jr., editor-in-chief.
“America is minorities”
From the 1945 Department of Defense film Don’t Be a Sucker .
Buffalo
I can already guess what Tucker Carlson might say about it, if he dares to say anything about it.
Good going, Carhartt
I hope that those who are planning to boycott Carhartt because of the company’s stand on vaccination will soon need to boycott all consumer goods.
Recently updated
Words of the year, now with insurrection.
Recently updated
Words of the year, now with one from The Economist.
Words of the year
“Vax” is first.
Performative again
Arts & Letters Daily recently linked to a short commentary on the word performative. The commentary is crotchety and overwrought, with talk of corruption and senseless violence and infestations of body lice. I’m not linking. It so happens that I wrote what seems to me a far clearer, more helpful, and less wrought commentary on performative back in March. That commentary I’ll link to.
On Juneteenth
Eugene Robinson, writing in The Washington Post: “Making Juneteenth, the anniversary of the day news of emancipation finally reached enslaved people in Galveston, Tex., a national holiday is a victory. But it is a hollow one at a moment when the political party that won the Civil War and made that freedom a permanent reality is now moving heaven and earth to keep African Americans from voting.”
Livonians in Latvia
“With a population estimated at just around 200, Europe's smallest ethnic group is fighting to save its language and culture from extinction”: the BBC looks at the Livonian people of Latvia.
Heather Cox Richardson’s latest
Heather Cox Richardson writes about gun violence, Brown v. Board of Education, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, and cowboys, real and imaginary.
Making it plain
A witness in the Derek Chauvin murder trial: “I always see the police, they’re always messing with people. And it’s wrong and it’s not right."
Performative
In speech-act terms, a performative is a statement that does something. In current everyday use, performative describes a statement that pretends to do something, that is merely a performance, that substitutes for doing anything of substance.
Steam heat
“Turn-of-the-century faith in ventilation to combat disease pushed engineers to design steam heating systems that still overheat apartments today.”
“The ethical is not halfway”
From an essay by Rebecca Solnit.
Nail-biter and others
Peter Sokolowski of Merriam-Webster looks at words of the 2020 election.
The best thing I’ve read today
Philip Kennicott, writing in The Washington Post about Trumpism as “a chronic condition of American public life,” “a lifestyle disease rooted in sedentary thinking.”
Masks, freedom, and toxic masculinity
From a brief interview with Anand Giridharadas about the American aversion to masks.
On the crisis in the humanities
Jon Baskin and Anastasia Berg, writing in The New York Times.
Love thy neighbor?
What might it take to persuade some people to take COVID-19 seriously and act accordingly? I’ve wondered if this message might work.
“Is it still celebrated?” Yes.
On June 19, a passage from Ralph Ellison’s Juneteenth.
Say Their Names
A New Yorker cover by Kadir Nelson.
Using both hands
Donald Trump* is at West Point using both hands to drink water from a glass, one hand holding the glass, the other propping it up from the bottom. As a friend of mine would say, Not normal!
Scott Robinson, “8 min. 46 sec.”
For saxophone.
“Manufacturing crime”
A Twitter account of one night riding along with a high-school classmate who’d become a police officer.
Mitt Romney marching
The world may not be upside down, but it’s certainly tilting a bit more.
A Class Divided
For anyone who hasn’t (or has) seen the Frontline documentary A Class Divided (1985), this would be a good time to watch (or watch again).
“This is an awful man”
Episcopal clergy talking about the man posing on television yesterday, holding a Bible and standing in front of an Episcopal church.
“Will History Stop Repeating Itself?”
A short film by Spike Lee.
Same as it ever was
remember talking on the telephone with my dad about the death of Amadou Diallo. My dad put it simply: “If he’d been white, he’d be alive.” That was 1999. And now again, with the death of George Floyd, as with so many other deaths: If he’d been white, he’d be alive. I think it really is that simple.